Early US Intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites

You don’t need to be a genius to figure out that centrifuges installed 70–80 meters underground will be largely unaffected by bombs which are believed to have an effect down to a depth of 60 meters.

Really? I think calculating the achieved overpressure to whatever structure underground after 6x 30k pound bomb impacts is far into the “genius” category. I’d wager you’d need a team of pretty smart people to even begin to get a wrong model of that.

No genius needed, but all those involved are motivated to lie about it. The bombs have a depth range and 200ft (60m) is the optimistic depth for ideal conditions. These were far from ideal conditions as the location was specifically chosen to resist this. That and ultra high performance concrete is now a thing. This is why the entrance and exists were bombed and those are easy enough to dig back out again. The attack was telegraphed so advanced preparations were made. It is rumored that the entrances and exits were packed with dirt in advance to minimize the damage.

I wonder why the US wouldn't lie about the effective depth range. Seems kinda dumb to telegraph to your enemies how far to dig.

The math isn’t that hard and the ideal case is a linear extrapolation so people can sit down with a calculator and figure it out.

You are still relying on parameters that they are disclosing to you.

There are physical limits to weight, hardness, max explosive energy and max kinetic energy and these are all known. The only way to exceed them would be to drop it from a higher altitude, like space, or give it a nuclear warhead. The US isn’t the only country that has tested bunker busters and the physics involved isn’t that hard. It’s just expensive.

Sure, but you have no firsthand knowledge of that information.

You are told the B2 can carry a certain payload weight.

You are told the B2 has a certain operational ceiling.

You are told the bombs are a certain weight.

You are told the bombs are made from a certain material.

You are told the bombs contain a certain type of explosive.

Everything you know about this device and its capabilities came from an organization that has every motivation to publish specs that are just enough to raise the eyebrows of the people this device is supposed to scare hell out of, but they have less than zero motivation to publish specs that speak to maximum capabilities.

So while your calculations might be accurate for the component values you gave it, your component values of your calculation are not accurate, because all you know is what you were told.

You can calculate these things based on wing size and airspeed and neither are hard to figure out, it’s clearly subsonic and it’s been seen in public.

While skunkworks are certainly a thing they’re not hiding some Star Trek antigravity device, physics is still physics and physical limits are physical limits. Look at the Otto Celera 500L if you want to see what attacking physical limits looks like. It’s an engineering problem and the fundamentals are well understood. The real magic is in creating the money to pay for it.

> You can calculate these things based on wing size and airspeed

If you can calculate the depth and damage those bombs did based on wing size and airspeed (which technically is another parameter you really don’t know, but are relying on what you are told) you ought to be working for the government.